Caraliza

by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

  To the left of the closet lay the kitchen, or, space once in use as a kitchen; there sat a decrepit gas stove, rusted to pieces in place against the wall. It had a single encrusted window, which once tried to give light to a tin basin sink, and looked out to a window well just below the sidewalk. A small brick curbing lay around this poor window well, to keep water out, but it ceased to do so, even when the tenant was sometimes living there. The kitchen turned to a small side room, only slightly larger; no furnishings of any kind were in that room.

  If there had been lights, they were never more than gas lamps. The walls were concrete. The only wood in the place being the joists of the first floor apartments, ten feet above, and the wooden planks lying on the concrete floor. The planks were not secured as flooring, just set in place and hammered if need be. Walking the floor barefoot would have been uncomfortable.

  Another short hall to the right, and to the left, before the side room stepped directly across - into a mean bedroom, half the size of the kitchen. A decayed bed sat and looked directly at the stove in the kitchen.

  Evan stood looking at the fallen pile of bed, under the smoldering gaze of the police department light stands, and he smelled the dust and decay, heating up for the first time in decades. It was the smell of unused cellar, damp, dirt filled, but he imagined it was very much worse when it rained and moisture might seep in, to awaken smells that loved water, and bloomed to choke one’s breath away. There was no hint of color - but a tiny breath of blue tin, in the mass of rust and decay.

  Evan refused to think the name of the girl who had been forced to live in this place; He did not want her spirit to know he was there. If she had murder in her, this memory would fan it to rage. He backed out of the vile room and stood in the short hallway he just crossed.

  If it had been used as more than a hall in a previous generation, it could not have that use now; to the right was brick, old and sturdy as the concrete walls. It had never been offended or ever painted; nothing was hidden there. But to the left another door, solid, wood and tin. And this door held to its hinges. It stood open.

  An officer directed Evan through this door to the left, down the short hallway. He found himself in a well, between the tenement buildings, at another set of steps down. It had been an air sump; an open hole nearly ten feet across. A well for the sewer, which then flowed directly to the river and would put rainwater back into the ocean from the city - when it worked. As older systems were replaced and modern pipes laid, stopgap measures would be taken in places, to help with water pressure problems. This well had been one. What had been a small courtyard, was now an alley, with a ten-foot brick wall, built to keep anyone out of the well. The apartment under the building was never an apartment in fact.

  The basement had merely been storage space, and access out to the courtyard from the street. When it had been sealed to use as an apartment? Likely when the well was constructed to let air escape the sewers running under the courtyard. Those tunnels ran between the buildings down to the next street, which was slightly lower. When the well was built, and the courtyard was walled at the end, the basement opened through the pitiful doorway and out directly to the well pit.

  Built like a chimney flue, it had no visible means to get down to the sewer pipes, but an opening was there, and water would often come up until the pressure eased; the design worked properly its entire lifetime, nearly thirty years. Water from the storm sewers never came up high enough to come into the basement. The well would sometimes be a swirl of mad water, rushing through the tunnel some ten feet below, but it never breached the lip of the well, and there was grass in the bricks now.

  The well wore a larger metal grate over it; a person could stand on the grate over the center of the well. Evan stood there, and a question, growing in his mind, found its answer; the police had not disturbed a single plank in the apartment. They were above the well, upon the grate (and they were all wondering if it were strong enough for six or eight of them to stand where they were) but they were at the brick wall, which sealed the courtyard from the well. They were tearing that wall to pieces on one end.

  Evan looked upward at a building, which rose five stories over the basement, and just opposite, an eight-story monster. Not a single window overlooked the well. An elephant could have been hidden there, and the city would never know. The police just discovered - the dead could be hidden there, and they were; three dead.

  Evan lost his senses, and was helped inside.

  The brick wall had been a single structure for a great while after it was built. But it had been cunningly overbuilt, as a double brick wall. The very odd thing was - it wasn’t sealed on the one end. It was possible to get between the inner and the outer walls. But that fact was hidden by the odd placement of the opening, at the very far end of the wall. Evan had to be shown photographs, taken before the hammers fell against the brick. Standing at the door, it was impossible to see the opening. A trick of perception.

  A photographers trick in fact. A slight of the eye of the beholder. Now-you-don’t-see-it, now-you-never-will.

  Only one thing protected this opening from search in 1919, when the police stormed the place every morning for a week, and then again every morning for two days about a month later; the well had no grate then. The grate had been installed later, by the building owner, who had access to the well - Menashe Reisman.

  He sealed the well, when he had the basement sealed. He believed he was preventing an accident. The workmen, who sealed the well, cared nothing about the double brick wall, except they threw their lunch trash between the walls the few days they worked there.

  The trash was still there when the wall was knocked down, and the bodies pulled out. Each smaller than an adult, each wrapped tightly in roofing felt. Each covered first with tar; roofing tar. In fact, old roofing tar was all over the steps leading down, under the grate, into the heart of the well. The dead had been prepared right there.

  The police had not walked near the opening between the brick walls in 1919, because they only had a two-foot curb around the very lip of the well. They never sent anyone along the lip to the other side, to see if the wall had been beautifully build to appear to touch the other building, as it obviously was connected on the side near the door. Each time they stepped to the lip of the well, they assumed any victim would have been tossed into the hole. They had no imagination at all. And bodies were being stashed between the bricks, after they were covered with the tar.

  Caraliza was hidden there alive, with one body at least, while the place was searched, and Evan knew when he saw it, she had been hidden there after she died. Evan Bryant had been invited into hell; the door stood opened for him.

  The thing at the top of the stair across the street laughed, but the building was empty, no one was afraid inside the Reisman Portraits. They were not unaffected across the street, however. The police department was stunned. Nothing like it had ever been found. A fiend built a crypt, and he filled it at his pleasure. Men and women, with years on the force, wept, as they brought the dead out into the kitchen area; they could not be taken to the street, there was now a crowd, and the press was there. Seventy-five year old murders are news. It was certainly news to this neighborhood.

  It was news to the Reismans as well. Shelly was screaming at the television in her parent’s home, held tightly, as she raged in her father’s arms.

  Evan could not walk. He was on the floor, in the side room in the basement. He did not look at the wrapped dead, as they were carried passed in front of him, and he would not look at them again, as he finally was taken by a very caring officer, up to the street, where he could breathe again. Evan was not allowing visitors at the present time; he was trying to see anything with his eyes that did not smile death back at him. He ended up putting his hands there, to shut out anything that looked like the hole he had just been inside.

  Shelly saw him on the news report, filthy from the dust under the great window, his head in his hands, as he sat frozen on the curb.
Horrors and tragedy - and two news crews fought over the best view of his reaction; he was their hero, he had seen hell. Did he have a comment? Shelly had a billion dollars of free publicity for her private ghost exhibit. Front page the next day, guaranteed. See we told you; the Reismans were foul people, see what they did to this neighborhood….

  Sareta arrived to take Evan home, to Shelly’s parents’ house. There would be no one walking in the Reisman Portraits for more than a month after this. Why he brought Papa’s chest, she was not certain, but he told her in a weak voice, it was found under the window; she didn’t know this box. There was stuff under the window, which needed to be seen. But no one would. Not until the city forgot about the discovery across the street, and that was going to take some time. Evan could not wait to have Shelly hold him again. He needed to pass out for a while, and she was very soft for that.

  The police would be interrupting their isolation within a few days. They called, with news of the first body Evan helped uncover.

  At least fifty years old and a very big man. It was not Yousep buried behind the shop, but the man had been buried likely in the late teens, or early twenties, over seventy years ago. It was good, and very terrible news. Four murders had been committed, the family currently believed there were only three victims - and one of them might have been a runaway, simply frightened off. Whatever Evan helped uncover, it was not remotely the story the Reismans needed explained.

  The results of the investigations into the three mummified bodies would take another week, but they knew the youths to be one boy, and two girls, from X-rays taken. No one in the clan wanted to think it was Yousep and Caraliza, buried across the street above that hole, but it would have helped them find a resting place for the two. They needed that now. The Reismans needed to bury their dead.

  The emotions in the family were raw and constantly upset. Some were condemning the work Shelly had done; it brought all the horror to light. Some defended her, but sadly, very few appreciated Evan’s role in the events. Had he been but a dumb boyfriend, Shelly would have opened a wonderfully haunted... something. None enjoyed the constant humiliation, in newsprint, of the family name; finally now associated with corpses, no longer just with rumor. And, to their chagrin, the young man who made it all possible, was a rival clan favorite son - Evan Bryant, who happened to have his skull bashed one day by the weird Reisman girl, whom the papers seemed to love misnaming as ‘Kelly’.

  Sareta had nearly enough of, what she was now famous for expressing at nearly every breath - shit.

  Shelly sat in her bedroom with Evan in her lap for days on end, and they would do little more than play with one another’s hair. She painted his nails once and he almost did not notice. They even ignored the new chest Papa also made, but hid. The Bryants were fuming, but he would not listen. Shelly spent her high school years sleeping in that bed, and sometimes sneaking boyfriends into the room. She held Evan every night there, but did not notice they were being perfect angels. Naked as cherubs, but they were Ken and Barbie for the entire time. The Reisman-Bryant duo was in shock, and did not think once to be naughty. More than spirits were broken in the clan. Hearts and egos were in shreds all over town. Love and desire were pushed aside by grief, and disbelief. It had all been so gruesomely true. Two children died in the Reisman Portraits in 1919. They were now in a police lab, on a table.

  Within days, the police were sharing more macabre information, about the shocking discoveries above the basement well. The old case files were fairly descriptive of the youth Benny, who had been missing since just before the loss of Yousep and Caraliza; they were certain Benny was removed from the crypt above the well. A broken arm, missing front teeth, were listed as identifying features, and found on the lad. Poor Benny ended up lost in time, and still no last name anyone could determine. He was just a youth on the street, in the slums, who never came back to sit with his fellows on the stoop above the stair. The two girls were being studied still, to find any clue to their identities, but there were no missing person reports to use in the investigations. Benny found friends in his terrible rest above the well, but unlike him, they were never missed.

  Evan could not imagine such a life, to have no value enough to concern a soul when they left the world. At least Benny could be buried with his name. Who were the girls? If Caraliza were one of the two, then which? Yousep? What of the poor lad, who discovered all the horror before his eyes, and tried to bring his love out of it - because he could do no less and still live? Where were they now?

  The family may have fought and argued about the handling of the building they shared, but they all felt compassion, which still had no task to perform, for the dead they felt they loved, and knew, as their very own. Shelly, who carried more of those spirits within her heart than any other Reisman in the city, remained strained to the point of breaking; Yousep and Caraliza could not be found.

  Evan knew, and Sareta knew, because she told him, the spirit at the top of the stair was not Menashe Reisman. Evan was certain in his heart; it could only be the beast that made the three murders. But weren’t there now five? Evan lost count. The police were about to help establish the correct number for him.

  They called, asking for his help. The sad day of the discovery, they forgot to ask him if the Reisman family kept any photographs of the two children, which could be used to help identify them in the remains. When police finally called asking the question, he seemed to have caused them a great deal of relief, they should have started with those pictures, but lost time for want of them. They asked him if he could scan them to computer files, and bring them to the labs to let them judge if the images helped.

  He spent the entire afternoon there, because he was fascinated with the process they used. Within moments of receiving the photos, police measured the bricks behind the angel, and the spade handle in Yousep’s hands, and made measurements all over the bodies of the two. He noticed as the photo technician worked over the image of Caraliza, the man’s mood changed, and his emotions became evident. At one point, he performed the same simple command Evan used before; he zoomed the photo into a very tiny area, and made it large as the computer screen would make it. His reaction at the clarity of the image was greater than Evan’s had been, he just wept and stopped his work.

  The existence of two excellent photographs had the affect of opening a doorway into the mystery for the investigators. Before Evan left late that afternoon, they confirmed; Benny was not accidentally Benny - he was indeed not Yousep, and the two girls must have been younger than Caraliza, they were neither one as tall. Yousep and Caraliza were not found. Evan no longer believed they would be.

  Why then were the three bodies not thrown into the well pit, but kept? The police wondered as well.

  In 1919, it was uncommon to block the sump wells with bars; walls should have prevented any entry. But this particular hole had bars in its throat, and they were just underneath the bend that made the entire hole invisible from above. Any dumped body would have just remained near the flue hole. It may have been found out by grisly accident, disposal may have been improvised after the bodies refused to float to the river.

  Evan revised his knowledge of the tragedy, and came away from the department labs realizing, if all the dead could be found, and named, there would be six. They knew who tortured Caraliza now, and who menaced the two lovers as they sought escape. They knew the beast murdered at least three times before. But who killed and buried the large man in the garden? Was the man in the garden the horrid creature who lived under the stoop? ‘For all we have learned,’ Evan thought as he drove home to see Shelly, ‘we still know nothing about putting the dead to rest.’ How could they possibly understand the means to do that? Evan wondered if the answer was hidden inside the second chest.

  “Grandma, I’ve served my time, I need to get back to work,” Shelly said into the phone at breakfast a few days later. Evan had eaten and gone home, to take care of his bills, and laundry, but would be returning for lunch.

&n
bsp; For a few days now, the two were quietly talking, very late at night; the renovation was stalled and needed to stop stalling. Shelly talked to her contractor only once, he had the basement nearly in place, Sareta saw to his needs. He was actually thankful he’d not been forced to deal with Shelly; her wallet never felt the expense, so nothing ever motivated her to cooperate with him. He worked well for Sareta, and was handsomely paid for it. He was quite happy for Shelly to come play at her building again; he would be forever gone and free of her.

  Sareta felt Shelly behaved well enough in her isolation, and with Evan constantly at her elbow for weeks now, she settled down to become a proper grandchild. Shelly was seething to get back to the building and became a superb actress to avoid more punishment. Evan was sweet, but they were playing at being a couple in her parent’s home. In truth, they were ready for some romp, and it just did not fit well into the surroundings. He only saw her naked in the bedroom after the house went to sleep, and she never interrupted any meals with some other distractions. They were bored, and ghosts were waiting. The only positive outcome of the isolation Shelly could find…Evan was back to himself, and seemed restored physically, his brow might be tender, but it did not ache anymore. She even tested it.

  They were free to leave and resume their lives as they wished. Sareta waited until no more news stories were appearing. She waited until the basement was in place and the equipment ready for installation. She knew Shelly was needed for the rest of the work, and she waved away the chains that bound the couple to her parents’ stifling home. Shelly was going to celebrate by working the next day in the shop entirely naked, and invited Evan to participate, because he stayed at her side for nearly a month, and she had missed him the whole time.